November 1962.

Involuntary revolution

"IN HEAVEN" OR "ON THE OTHER SIDE"?

The Bible speaks of God as "the Most High" living "in heaven." Undoubtedly, the biblical picture of a three-storey universe with heaven above, earth below, and waters below the earth (cf. Exodus 20:4) was once taken quite literally. It is also certain that if the most sophisticated biblical writers had been pushed to do so, they themselves would have recognized in these images a symbolic language that was supposed to convey spiritual realities. But no one pushed them. In any case, this language did not cause them any difficulties. Even such an educated and secular person as the Apostle Luke could express confidence in the ascension of Christ (i.e. that He is not only alive, but also reigns at the right hand of the majesty of God) in the most primitive expressions: Onde ascended to heaven, and there he sat at the right hand of the Most High (Acts 1:911). And he felt no need to justify himself for such expressions, although of all the New Testament writers it was he who preached Christianity primarily to "educated people who despise it," as Schleiermacher would say. All this is especially strange when one remembers how decisively the same Luke persuaded his readers that Christianity completely abolished the (hardly more primitive) conception of God held by the Athenians, namely, that the deity dwelt in temples made with hands and required the service of human hands (Acts 17:2231).

Moreover, it is precisely the two most mature theologians of the New Testament, the Apostle John and the late Paul, who write more extensively about this "ascent" and "descent" than others.

"No one ascended into heaven except the Son of man who came down from heaven" (John 3:13).

"Does this offend you? What then, if you see the Son of man going up to where he was before?" (John 6:6162).

"And what does 'ascended' mean, if not that He also descended first into the lowest places of the earth? He who descended, He is also He who ascended above all heavens, that He might fill all things" (Ephesians 4:9-10).

They could use this language without any embarrassment – it did not yet cause them difficulties. Everyone understood what was meant when they spoke of a God who was "in heaven," even if people were simpler and perceived these expressions more vulgarly than the wise men. Of course, the phrase "caught up to the third heaven" (2 Cor. 12:2) was a metaphor for Paul, as it is for us, although it probably seemed to him a more accurate metaphor. But at any rate he could use it to appeal to a spiritually sophisticated Corinthian audience, and he did not feel the need to make it more acceptable by demythologization.

For the New Testament writers, the idea of God "in heaven" did not cause unnecessary difficulties – it had not yet become a problem. In our country, it does not cause any particular difficulties either – for most of our contemporaries, it has already ceased to be a problem. We have already ceased to notice that we still usually express a special degree of quality in terms of height, although, as Edwin Bevan has remarked, "the idea that moral and spiritual values increase or diminish in proportion to the distance from the earth's surface would certainly seem very strange if expressed in such a naked form." But there is no need to make excuses, to explain what we mean, for a long time. However, there is still a need to explain to our children that "heaven" is not really what is above our heads, and God does not literally sit "above the azure firmament". And most of us still have an image of a "heavenly elder" somewhere in the depths of our souls, even if our conscious ideas were completely different. And yet, today, the traditional symbolism of the three-storey universe is a serious obstacle for few people. It does not disturb our intellect and does not become a temptation to faith, because we have long since made a wonderful substitution, which, however, we are hardly conscious of. In fact, the crudely spatial nature of biblical terminology does not bother us simply because we have ceased to perceive it as spatial. This is similar to transposition in music: if a part needs to be transferred to a different key, then an experienced musician instantly and without mental effort makes a mental substitution by looking at the text of the printed score. In the spirit of this analogy, it can be said that although there are some difficult passages in the biblical score that require conscious effort from us (for example, the story of the Ascension), on the whole we have no difficulty transposing it "from the sheet".

For the place of the literally or physically "Most High" God in our consciousness has been taken by God, spiritually or metaphysically "beyond". For some, of course, He is "otherworldly" almost literally. Even if they recognized the Copernican revolution in science, they could still think until very recently that God was somewhere outside the space around us. Indeed, the number of people who unconsciously believed that it was impossible to believe in God in the cosmic age shows how grossly physical this notion of God's "otherworldliness" was for many. As long as there were still depths of the cosmos inaccessible to investigation, it was possible to place God in a kind of terra incognita8; but now that it is possible to look there, if not from a rocket, then at least with the help of a radio telescope, there seems to be no room left for God, not only in the hotel9 but in the entire universe. Of course, our new knowledge of the universe doesn't really change anything. After all, "space" has not become less limited than before, only now this limitation is associated with the speed of light. Beyond a certain distance, which we have almost reached, everything fades beyond the horizon of visibility. And no one will prevent us, if we really want to, from placing God beyond this horizon. There, in a field forever closed to scientific research, our God will be completely safe. Yet such a vulgar "projection" of God far away has become unthinkable with the advent of the space age—and we should welcome it. For if we speak of the "transcendence" of God, it is certainly not in the literal sense!